


I lived through those early days.

by strangeglu



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 21:06:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6582442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeglu/pseuds/strangeglu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhett gets the opportunity to relive one of the happiest memories of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I lived through those early days.

**Author's Note:**

> Repost. Originally posted to mythical-rhink.tumblr.com.

The company that provides the service guarantees that the time the customer visits will be one of the happiest periods of their lives. They can’t say for sure exactly when that time will be, the equipment is not that precise, but they guarantee a satisfactory experience, an emotional trip down memory lane or your money back, no questions asked. As Rhett McLaughlin signs his name to the printed contract and hands the clipboard back to the prim receptionist behind the desk, the emotion he most prominently feels is scepticism.

When the company’s incredible services first hit the market almost eighteen months ago, the demand had been sky high, the young and old of Los Angeles and the wider world scrambled to make appointments for the miracle drug which sends you back in time. A chance to go back in time, that’s what was promised. Not literal time travel, no, that was impossible, just a trip back into your own memories, a chance to relive, or remember, half-forgotten experiences. The traveller, it was said, would inhabit the body of their previous self, not able to actually change anything substantial, but not bound by the confines of memory either, able to control simple actions, to feel everything just as it was, a completely immersive experience.

Rhett sits in the company’s waiting room on a plush leather couch as the doctor prepares for his appointment. The walls of the room are lined with framed photographs of smiling men and women, each printed with a testimonial extolling the virtues of the company and their amazing work, and describing the wonderful memories the company had allowed them to relive.

Six hours, that’s what he’d be getting, six hours to experience a snapshot of his own past before returning to the present.

He had been holding off on undergoing the procedure himself, even as everyone else raved and gushed about it, part of him not wanting to disturb or corrupt the memories of his past that he held dear in his heart. When his wife, Jessie, however, had returned from her own session, she had talked to him for hours about how wonderful it had felt to be back in her home in North Carolina, surrounded by family, to experience being sixteen again for just a few hours, and his resolve had finally begun to crumble. It might be nice, he had thought, to experience being a kid again, to go back to a time before he felt the inevitable pressure and responsibility of adulthood. 

It wasn’t, however, until his best friend and business partner, Link Neal, a fellow holdout, had succumbed to the pressure and booked himself an appointment, that Rhett really thought about doing the same. When Link returned from his session he was visibly elated by the experience, he had told Rhett, and the viewers of their internet show Good Mythical Morning, about how the experience had allowed him to relive of one of the best days of his life, although he remained coy about what day exactly he had visited, and after hearing the genuine happiness in Link’s voice as he talked, Rhett made his decision and reserved his appointment there and then, despite his hesitation.

“Mr McLaughlin?” A woman in a white labcoat calls from a set of double doors, Rhett raises his hand in acknowledgement and follows behind her as she walks back through the doors and down a long, white hall.

When he arrives in the room he greets the doctor, joking idly about his own nervousness as he is directed to sit in the large green chair in the middle of the room, and finally falls silent and still as round disks attached to wires are placed on his temples, which the doctor explains will monitor his brain activity while he is under. The doctor tells him that she is about to administer the drug that will send him tumbling back through his own memory, and asks him to count slowly backwards from ten. The doctor places an IV drip in his arm -9- and Rhett tries to focus on anything -8- but the cold leather of the chair -7- and the numb sensation which is beginning to take over his senses. -6- He thinks about Jessie -5- and her wonderful memory of her family, -4- and about Link, and the memory that he refused to describe -3-what had he seen? -2- Rhett doesn’t have much time to wonder because he is already done counting, and in a swirl of colour the room melts away and he is plunged into darkness, his mind spinning as it plummets towards its unknown destination.

\---

When Rhett McLaughlin arrives in the body of his past self it is to the sensation of tight heat and pleasure thrumming through his suddenly alert and aroused body. Startled and disoriented, Rhett pulls away from the sensation, nearly falling backwards from where he is knelt on the unstable, downy surface of a bedspread. Rhett keeps his eyes closed as he gains his bearings, sitting back on his heels, aware vaguely of the other person whose bony hips his hands are still clutching to, who he can feel moving now, perhaps to look back in confusion at the sudden halt in proceedings. Rhett calms himself, and breathes deeply.

Being in the memory is a heady experience, he feels every sense ten times more intensely than he did on the surface, he can smell, feel, hear everything in striking clarity, and as he settles he realises – he knows exactly where he is.

He tilts his head back and opens his eyes, the painted cream ceiling of his childhood bedroom coming into focus. He cranes his neck to look around the room, for now ignoring the questioning figure with soft warm skin in front of him as he takes in the red papered walls, exactly as he remembers them from his childhood.

A mountain of bunched up clothes is piled in a corner, where his mother hasn’t yet procured them to place in the laundry hamper. Various trophies, basketball, little league, even a golf one or two surround him on shelves and dressers. In another corner a forgotten suitcase, half filled with clean clothes is strewn with various debris from around his room. A gentle light shines through the crimson curtains at the window, the sun is near rising, and the room is lit by a dim red glow. He must be in his senior year of high school, he thinks to himself as he drinks in the sight, about to go off to college, that explains the lazily packed suitcase, and that also explains…

Rhett turns just then back to the young man that is splayed on his stomach before him on the bed, a naked expanse of tanned skin, marked by various thin white scars gained from childhood escapades, Rhett’s own hands clutching at his hips where his legs splay wide around Rhett’s own, the skin of his round ass creamy white and pristine in comparison to his back, his goateed face now turned to look at Rhett with a frown at the sudden loss of Rhett’s presence on top of and inside him.

“Whus wrong with you?”

Link Neal asks, his eyes still slightly hooded and his accent thick with youth and the foggy remnants of his pleasure. Rhett stares at the boy with wonder, the long skinny limbs and the mop of parted hair, shorn underneath to the tips of his skull. He glances down at his own body, similarly skinny, a golden tan from days spent shirtless, swimming in the river, no doubt. His hand rises quickly to feel at his face, beardless and smooth under his fingers for the first time in nearly a decade.

Gazing back down at his prone best friend, Rhett is filled with a feeling of awe; amazed at the fact that the company had managed to send him here, to the short period of time in which his best friend had become more than a friend, that they had gone from sharing summer days in pursuit of childish adventure to sharing kisses in the back of Link’s truck parked in shady corners of abandoned lots and longer embraces locked in the safety of Rhett’s room, a time before college and convention and fear had ultimately forced them apart.

“Rhett, what is up with you?”

Rhett rallies at the sound of his friend’s curious voice, hushed, calling to him for a second time.

“Nothing’s wrong, baby.” He mumbles automatically.

He falters over the ‘baby’, a crack in his voice. The word had been seldom used between the two, hissed out in the passion of furtive fumbles or whispered in the dark of the night for no one but the speaker to hear - now reserved for a different brunette with a round face and a laugh warm like afternoon sun. Link isn’t placated, he knows that something is bothering Rhett - he always knows – and he twists his torso, propping himself on an elbow to raise a questioning eyebrow and offer a wry, but kind smile. Rhett gazes at the man before him, the boy whose intimate smiles and longed-for embraces were snatched away from him long ago, and feels the overwhelming urge to protect, to keep, to love fiercely and wholly and cling to for as long as he is able.

“Nothing’s wrong.” Rhett repeats as he gently takes hold of Link’s wrist - his long fingers making an easy circle around the delicate, hairy forearm - and pushes the boy to his back, trapping him with the heat of Rhett’s own body as he moves up the bed and leans down into a kiss that bears the weight of almost two decades of unspoken feeling. Link’s lips are as soft as he remembers, but hotter too, the sensation of Link’s slowly parting lips and his searching tongue searing in Rhett’s stomach and up his bared back like the touch of a hot poker.

Where the shock of the arrival had dampened the flames that his younger self had kindled, Rhett now feels himself responding to the kiss with urgency, his naked body seeking Link’s own to join in ecstatic reunion. As their hardened shafts press firm against each other’s abdomens Link throws his head back, breaking the kiss, the long line of his neck a stubbled expanse that Rhett can’t help but mouth at, drawing a noise from Link that has Rhett moaning in turn and gazing at the boy in startled reverence.

When Link’s eager legs start to scale Rhett’s sides, trying desperately to hook themselves behind his back, Rhett takes his cue to re-enter Link’s body, the tight clench of Link’s hole filling him with heat from his stomach to the raised hairs on his head as he slowly slides into its half-forgotten embrace. The feeling of pressing his hips to the backs of Link’s thighs, of leaning down with his arms bracketing Link’s head to drop kisses to Link’s slack and panting mouth, is one of such security, such fierce loyalty and devotion, that all Rhett’s senses feel as though on a razor edge, in constant danger of convulsing into hot, fat tears, that would spill themselves onto Link’s body and face like summer rain.

The intense heat, amplified by the proximity of their downy chests as Rhett rocks steadily into Link, face pressed to the musky cavern of his neck, propels both boys quickly towards their completion, Link’s shaft trapped between their bodies slicking the skin of their torsos and anticipating his imminent release. As Rhett pushes home, nudging against Link’s prostate the younger boy starts to tighten around him, his head pressing back into the pillow and hushed moans falling from his throat. Link’s orgasm hits him with a visible shudder, his arms coming up to squeeze around Rhett’s body as his cock spills his release. Rhett looks down on the younger boy as he continues to rut and grind against his hips, savoring the feel of the boy’s embrace, the expression of humorous contentment on his face as he opens his eyes and wriggles his hips to tease Rhett’s own orgasm from his body. Rhett leans down for one last desperate kiss as his hips begin to falter and he is overcome, drawing back enough to gasp out “I-I love you L-” before he tips over the edge with a groan.

When he comes down from his immediate high he sees Link’s still panting face staring up at him with a surprised and curious frown – casual ‘I love you’s had never been a part of their relationship – but something in Rhett’s demeanour seems to stay his questioning thoughts, and cause him to instead pull Rhett down to lay spooned into his side as they shudder through aftershocks and regain their halting breath.

Rhett presses his nose behind Link’s ear and breathes in the slightly chemical scent of Link’s shampoo, the smell nearly drowning him in the sudden deluge of memory; long nights spent lying pressed together in dark bedrooms and truck beds, each just breathing the other in, the time for talking long exceeded in the adventures of the previous day.

They lay like that for a long time, the rays of the morning sun filtering through the curtained window to cast panes of light across the bed. The alarm clock on the bedside table tells Rhett that it’s nearing ten o'clock, a Saturday he deduces by the fact that no one has yet knocked to rouse them for breakfast or church. If he listens closely he can hear the sounds of his mother moving pans in the kitchen, surely in the process of preparing one of the delicious if slightly excessive late breakfasts that she was prone to make whenever a guest was in the house, even if that guest was as familiar as Link.

His stomach growled at the thought of it.

His older brother would be sitting at the kitchen island, eating cereal as he watched TV through the open living room door. His father would be making coffee, occasionally helping his mom to reach an ingredient or utensil from a high cupboard, or stirring some pancake batter as his mom tended to the eggs. He should go to them, he thought to himself, while he still had the time, take the opportunity to relearn the feeling of being a cherished son, of being cared for without responsibility.

But Link is warm against his side, dark hair mussed and pushed back from his face to splay over the pillow in a fractal tangle, like the thatched branches of the cottonwood trees they’d climb in the summer, sun warm on their backs and carefree joy pumping through their hearts, propelling them towards higher perches, better adventures, and eventually the quiet, soft feeling of interlocked fingers, and hushed voices, as they lay down on riverbanks, the night air cooling the black waters of the Cape Fear as they made plans and dreamed of the stars.

In a red bedroom in North Carolina, Rhett McLaughlin turned his back for the moment to the bustle of his family waiting outside the door, already lost in the clean, peaceful face of his slumbering best friend.


End file.
